• publications
  • projects

Tag Archives: IRC Employment Based Programme

Brexit & Folklore: a Conference in Derby | March 29 2019

Comments Off on Brexit & Folklore: a Conference in Derby | March 29 2019
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on January 31, 2019 – 4:07 pm
Filed under History of Anthropology
Clara Patterson’s photograph of children playing a game in Ballymiscaw, County Down, c.1894. Patterson was encouraged by Alfred Cort Haddon to document folk customs in Ireland.

Folklore, Nationalism, Home Rule, and Brexit

Ciarán Walsh will be taking part in a conference on the relation between folklore and nationalism. Folklore and the Nation is timed to coincide with the exit of the UK from the EU. It’s being organised by the Folklore Society (FLS) and hosted by the University of Derby. It kicks off on the afternoon of Friday 29 March 2019.

His paper deals with ethnicity, nationalism and folklore, drawing on a forgotten anti-imperial movement in British folklore. It begins with an anti-colonial speech delivered by Alfred Haddon in Ipswich in 1895. Haddon was aligned with the volkskunde wing of the folklore movement in Ireland and opened his speech by acknowledging nationalist efforts to disengage from political and economic union with Britain.

A family of politicians gathered around the coffin of the Home Rule Bill; a presentation cartoon from the ‘St Stephens’ Review’, 12 June 1886. Colour lithograph
© The Trustees of the British Museum.

Haddon entered anthropology through folklore, equating the destruction of native customs in subjugated territories with the loss of personal identity, ethnicity, and, ultimately, nationhood. Haddon spoke to Patrick Geddes and Havelock Ellis about reconstituting anthropology as a vehicle for radical anti-colonial activism.

They were inspired by the anarchist geography of Kropotkin, the radical ethnology of Reclus, and the “Zeitgeist” of Gomme (FLS). This conference looks like the place  to remember an engagement between Irish nationalists, English folklorists and stateless anarchists /ethnologists on the brink of Ireland’s exit from Britain. 

Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth

Comments Off on Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 9, 2014 – 4:37 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Education, Heritage, Research

Mark Maguire, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds and Steve Coleman

Mark Maguire, Head of Anthropology NUI Maynooth, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds, President of thr Anthropological Society NUIM and Steve Coleman, NUIM at the opening of the Headhunter exhibition in NUI Maynooth in October 2013.

A major research proposal prepared by Ciarán Walsh for the Irish Research Council’s (IRC) Employment Based Post-graduate Programme has been endorsed by the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM)  and now proceeds to the IRC for evaluation and adjudication. The proposal builds on the work that Walsh has been doing on the ‘Haddon in Ireland Project’ and involves a 4 year post-graduate research project supervised by Mark Maguire of NUIM in partnership with Abarta Audio Guides, a small heritage services company operated by Neil Jackman and Róisín Burke.

Neil Jackman of Abarta Audio Guides: http://abartaaudioguides.com/about-us

The ‘Haddon in Ireland’ research project brings together public research (NUI Maynooth), private sector innovation (Abarta Audio, Clonmel) and a researcher with a proven track record (Ciaran Walsh) to reopen and reexamine the history of human science in the British isles.

Anthropometry Inisbofin 6007

This project aims to explore the Irish Ethnographic Survey, an attempt to reveal the origins of the Irish ‘race’ undertaken by scientists from Ireland and the UK between 1891 and 1903. Among them was the famous AC Haddon. This was the beginning of ‘scientific’ Anthropology but it was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge. The records were ‘lost,’ dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years.

The primary aim to reconstruct that archive and place it in the public domain. The central question is how that can be achieved, given that the material is spread over a dozen institutions in 4 jurisdictions. We will look to the latest interactive technology for solutions.

We propose to create a transnational network that digitally links collections Dublin, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and Belfast. We will develop interactive tools that will provide access to it and enhance the users experience of our anthropological heritage. The contemporary significance of this is enormous. The Survey’s attempts to trace the origins of the Irish people continues with the genetic study of populations.

This project will reconnect both and the transnational component will add enormously to the impact of the project on the public construction of Anthropological knowledge.

  •  

     

    HOME

     

    Anthropo lab 2016 P1180364 600 dpi

     

     

  • News

    • TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin
    • Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.
    • Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?
    • Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD
    • The Ann Doherty Collection goes on show
  •  

     

    COMMENT | BLOG

     

    ballymac-banner1 400

  • ABOUT

     

    ciaran ambrotype2IMG_0001

     

     

  • CONTACT

     

    curator.ie@gmail.com

     

    +353872370846

     

    Booleenshare

    Ballyheigue

    Tralee

    Co Kerry

    Ireland

     

     




Latest News



TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin



Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?



www.curator.ie || Booleenshare, Co. Kerry, Ireland || web design by Kerrynet Solutions